Due to circumstances beyond my control, I will keep this very brief, with the help of my column this month, at The Catholic Answer: For most of my life, the assumption of Mary existed as little more, for me, than a head-scratcher of a dogma. I understood that Elijah and Enoch had been assumed into heaven, so if I considered Mary’s assumption at all, it was simply to shrug it off: “Mary was assumed into heaven. Sure, why not?” The… Read more

You all know me, so I don’t have to introduce myself or bore you with interviews and commercials. My platform: Everybody shut up My foreign policy: “You crazy nations, shut up and act right, you want to give me a heart attack?” My first action as president: Declare a week of silent retreat, reading and cookouts My first policy move: Every government, foreign, domestic and local, will build (or help neighbors build) as many as these as needed, because water…. Read more

So…this happened: And seriously? I have no idea what to tell you about it. It’s called Little Sins Mean a Lot: Kicking Our Bads Habits Before They Kick Us, and I probably should never have written it. The other day a friend said to me, “I just got your book in the mail; thanks a whole lot, pal! You’re a pain in the butt and I happen to like ignoring my little sins, because that leaves me free to fume… Read more

“Who in America really can resist the clarion call of youth? … down with experience.” Wild in the Streets For most of my life, I have felt like 1968 had never quite disappeared — that it had not quite played itself out, and we would see it again, showing up in politics and the culture at some point. Recent events, most particularly college campus demonstrations and street violence, has brought around that old feeling again, and it stepped up a… Read more

I was struck by this brief but heartfelt farewell to Nancy Reagan by legendary television producer Norman Lear, founder of the progressive group, People for the American Way, and a recent voice for the restoration of civics lessons, something retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’ Connor has championed for years. Lear writes that upon receiving the news of Mrs. Reagan’s death, he was grieved, because he had lost a friend. A second friend mocked him for the feeling; mocked… Read more

Well, we’re done. Super Tuesday, I mean. We’re done. And in my facebook threads what I basically am observing is the vomiting of the masses, because no one — except the hackiest of hacks — seems happy with what we’re facing, in terms of potential presidents. Last night I wondered aloud whether the Obama administration might do the unthinkable and actually permit its Justice Department to indict Hillary Clinton, so Joe Biden could stroll in and make it easy for… Read more

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to make music to your name, O Most High, to proclaim your love in the morning and your truth in the watches of the night, on the ten-stringed lyre and the lute, with the murmuring sound of the harp. (Psalm 92:2-4) And, apparently, with the music of birds on wires, as well, at least in the eyes, and to the ears, of one clever musician in Brazil! While reading a newspaper… Read more

Christmas day never comes without my remembrance of “Uncle Charlie”, a family friend who once appeared on our doorstep, decked out in all of Santa’s raiment and tripping in his boots only slightly. He had apparently been Santa for a party at the local soup kitchen (or the local bar; this was never clear to me) and — just a trifle in his cups — had decided during his walk home that he would stop at the houses of his… Read more

“The mercy of God is not an abstract idea but a concrete reality,” writes Pope Francis. Well thanks be to God for this emphatic good news, and for the nearly here Jubilee of Mercy. That it begins one week into Advent — the sweet and lonely season of anticipation for the coming of the All Merciful — seems especially appropriate and hopeful, given our times, for at the Incarnation Mercy was delivered, in fragile and human form, to a brutal… Read more